On the first Saturday of each month, Life & Arts taps into the many questions received and answered by the staff of the Columbus Metropolitan Library. A sampling:
Q: Why does one hear the ocean when a seashell is held to an ear?
A: Spiral conch shells best exhibit the idea, but other types of shells produce the effect, too. The sound is created by ambient noise, which is bounced around inside the shell as in an echo chamber. (To test the theory, one might cup a hand around an ear.) The size and shape of a shell, along with the intensity of the ambient noise, affect the sound.
(Source: www.science.howstuffworks. com/question556.htm)
Q: Where did the phrase “cool as a cucumber” originate?
A: First identified in print (with some women called “as cold as cucumbers”) through the 1610 play Cupid’s Revenge, it describes someone self-possessed and unemotional. Scientists proved the folk wisdom in 1970, measuring cucumbers at a temperature almost 20 degrees lower than the outside air temperature on a warm day.
( The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins)
Q: Why does Earth always face the same side of the moon?
A: The moon takes exactly as long to rotate on its axis as it does to orbit around Earth — or about 29 days. Gravity basically explains why: The pull on the moon from Earth has slowed the rotation of the moon to its present speed, locking the rotation with the time needed to orbit Earth. The pull from the moon has also slowed the rotation of Earth — so that, in a few billion years, it will show only one side to the moon.